Keunbong (KB) Do Joins Solve

Three years in, the Unified Patent Court is no longer just a faster route through European patent litigation. It is becoming a single venue capable of resolving infringement across the UK, Switzerland, Turkey and Spain in one action. That shift has one source: the CJEU's BSH v Electrolux ruling, and what UPC divisions have done with it since February 2025.

The court has issued more than 1,800 decisions, with around 700 new actions a year and 31 already citing BSH. For teams navigating that volume across multiple jurisdictions, AI-assisted research platforms like Solve Intelligence exist for exactly this kind of work.

Solve Intelligence partnered with AmLaw 100 firm Haynes Boone to bring together 100+ senior IP leaders in Silicon Valley for a candid discussion on how AI is being used in patent practice today, and how that's shifting over the next 12 months.

The evening was led by Leah Poynter Waterland (Sr. Director, Cisco), Jeff Draeger (Chief Patent Counsel, Intel), David McCombs (Partner and Board Member, Haynes Boone), Tony Capecci (Director of Practice Innovation, Haynes Boone), and Mallun Yen (Founder, Operator Collective; IP leader and Ex-Cisco).

The room was 70% in-house, drawing Heads of IP and senior IP leaders from across enterprise software and cloud (Microsoft, IBM, Snowflake), semiconductors (Intel, Applied Materials), life sciences (Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Gilead), mobility and autonomy (Tesla, Waymo), connected devices and networks (Cisco, Samsung Research America), and AI labs (Mistral AI). The remaining 30% were outside counsel from firms including BCLP, Finnegan, Perkins Coie, Procopio, and Skadden.

Key Insights

• Today, Solve supports global IP teams deploying AI agents for large-scale tasks including search across millions of patent and non-patent literature, portfolio analysis on thousands of assets, and claim charting, focussed on transparent source-backed and auditable outputs.
• Every IP leader in the room had either rolled out an AI patent platform or was in active procurement.
• Successful AI implementation requires collaboration and trusted long-term partnerships between IP teams, vendors, and outside counsel.
• Solve CEO Chris Parsonson expects per-user token usage to grow more than 1000x over the next 12 months.

AI inventorship is now settled law across major jurisdictions, and inventive step is the new battleground for AI patents. These were some of the central conclusions of the 2nd AI & IP Forum in Munich. The full-day programme tackled the most pressing questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and intellectual property. Our CEO, Chris Parsonson, joined a panel on Technology and Security Considerations for AI Systems. 

Chris leads Solve Intelligence, the purpose-built AI platform for patent professionals, so the panel's themes around sovereign AI, confidentiality, and human-in-the-loop control sit at the centre of our daily work.

INTA's 148th Annual Meeting brought nearly 10,000 IP professionals from over 145 jurisdictions to London May 2 to 6. The question at the conference was no longer whether AI belongs in IP practice. Here are three key observations from the week that we think matter for where the profession is heading.